One bright spot: Fucito’s first MLS start. If he gets more playing time, the onus is on him to put in that much effort day-in and day-out. At least the Fucito worshipping around the interwebs never gets old, if only I could say the same….

Brek Shea. Man or rodent? Pesky, certainly.

Why such a ghastly, deathly, dreary long-ball of a performance? Even with Zakuani healthy, can you remember the last time we had real bite and threat in the attacking third? Friberg’s touch was terrible. Switching out the fullbacks out was a disaster. (Not a good sign for the long summer ahead). Rosales was off. And Republican climate solutions get us further forward than all that Sounders possession.

Yay! Just boot it! Clear-cut the rain forest!

I’m going to stop here. We need goals. Please.

I’m about to go mental in here streaming the match solo in the middle of these damp, green woods.

Update: What stream? Listening to Arlo on the RADIO stream – I NEED VISUALS. Off to the tavern at half I think….

I’ll skip the “late night munchies” lyricism so popular these days and share a recipe.

Pizza Dough

Mix a good spoonful of honey and a packet of rapid-rise yeast in about 3/4 cup warm water (almost steaming). It should bubble and get frothy on top within three to five minutes.

In a fairly large bowl, put two cups of flour and a big pinch of salt. When your yeast water is active, pour it on the flour and salt and stir until your dough is pretty much one clump. Add more water or more flour if necessary. I keep it on the moist side because next you’re going to knead the dough on a floured countertop, so it’s easy to add extra flour that way.

Sprinkle some flour and knead the dough until it’s ‘smooth as a baby’s bottom’ or about eight minutes. You’ll be able to tell when you’re holding a nice ball of dough. Whoa there! Don’t work it too hard. (Actually, I don’t think I ever knead for eight minutes . . . and you really don’t want to over-knead.)

Rub some olive oil over your tasty ball of dough, put it in a bowl and cover with a towel. Let it rise in a warm area of your kitchen for about half an hour or until doubled in size or until you can’t wait any longer. Roll it out. Decorate. Bake as hot as you can for about 10 or 12 minutes — until the cheese is crispy in spots and the crust golden brown.

Enjoy.

*I topped this pizza with sliced tomatoes, mozz, sauteed onion and garlic, and some parsley after I pulled it out of the oven. I also like to put a little fennel salt and olive oil between the dough and topping ingredients.

Find a plastic container with lid. I haven’t had a steady home in a few years, so I’m calling one of many spare storage bins into action.

Get out your drill, put on the fattest drill bit you can find and put a bunch of holes in that thing. Doing it outside will make your mom happy. When you’re done, it should look like you just left a shooting range.

And it’s ready.

Now you just need green and brown compost matter, and some soil to get things going. I read add one part green (vegetables, leaf trimmings) to two parts brown (coffee grounds, twigs) material.

Knowing how much critter action there is around these parts, I’m not going to leave this baby by my front door. We shall see.

You’ll be smiling and trying to dance in your chair. You might even stand.

Monsters by Raymond Lombardi

Deerhunter – Coronado
Smith and Westerns – Dance Away
Cults – Go Outside
The Stylistics – I’m Your Puppet
The War on Drugs – Comin’ Through
Wild Nothing – Quiet Hours
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti – Round and Round
The Talking Heads – This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Funkadelic – Can You Get to That
Beach Boys – Angel Come Home
Fleetwood Mac – Everywhere

Featuring Mike Wazowski, Master Oogway and Phil Conners.

Courtesy of our dear friend, Wibaux.

Um, I think that's supposed to be a patron saint, not the grim reaper.

The first leg, away in Panama, will take place on a day falling between July 26-28. It looks like San Francisco play in a small 3,000 seat stadium. The return leg at Qwest Field will be between August 2-4.

If the Sounders win and advance to the group stages, they will face this year’s champion, Monterrey (Mexico). If you remember, Monterrey was in our group of death last year and are a very, very strong team lead by Humberto Suazo. The group will be rounded out by Comunicaciones (Guatemala) and the winner of Herediano (Costa Rica)/Caribbean Club Championship third-place finisher.

I love these mid-week international fixtures — we’re guaranteed one home and one away international match and I like our chances of advancing past San Francisco into group play. It’s too early to start talking about how much easier (other than Monterrey) this group will be than last year’s….

SBNation has a nice recap of the draw.

Here’s Don Ruiz’s article on the draw, including Sigi’s reaction:

The Sounders will face San Francisco FC of Panama in the preliminary round of the 2011 CONCACAF Champions League. The teams will compete in a two-game aggregate score match. The winner will got into a group including Monterrey of Mexico, Comunicaciones of Guatemala and team to be determined.

“I got excited because I thought we were going to San Francisco. That would be a great trip. That would be a lot closer and a lot easier to get to,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said. “No, I don’t know much about them. Obviously Panamanian soccer has gotten much better over the last 10 years or so. I know in qualifying when I had the youth team back in ’99 they were starting to come on. They were much better in 2005. They’ve produced some good players in the past. And it’s a difficult place to play. Their field is oftentimes wet and a little mucky, a little bit like it was in El Salvador last year at this time. So we’ve got to be sure we come through with that. And then obviously we want to advance on and we get a chance to play Monterrey again if that happens. And Comunicaciones from Guatemala will be a welcome opponent. And then I guess we either have a Caribbean team or we would play a team from Costa Rica – Herediano, I think. For us, it’s a situation of focusing on the first task, which is getting past San Francisco of Panama. That’s what we’ve got to focus on.

Contrary to other reports, Schmid said the first leg will be played in Seattle — probably July 26 or 28 (the MLS All-Star game is July 27 in New Jersey — and the second leg will be in Panama at midweek between the July 30 MLS game at Houston and the Aug. 6 league game at Kansas City.

“Our first game is at home in that series and the second game is on the road,” Schmid said. “That second one will make it a difficult one for us because we’re playing in Houston, and then we’ll go down to Panama, and then we go to Kansas City, and then we come home and our reserves go to Vancouver. So it will be some frequent flier miles and some passport stamps.”

General manager Adrian Hanauer said Sounders home games will once again be played at Qwest Field.

EPIC.

Jaw-dropping.

Spine-tingling.

Watching this makes my chest swell and my eyes sting, still.

Incredible props to the Emerald City Supporters for capturing the emotion of this rivalry and pulling off this enormous project. ECS, you make us all proud to be Sounders. Thank you.

Take three minutes out of your day to watch the biggest tifo display ever to grace North American stadia:

Joshua Mayers did a solid interview with ECS director of tifo, Rob Scott on how the display came about and what it took to put it together. Impressive.

Media coverage of the Decades of Dominance of tifo has been hearty, but the ECS has to be stoked to be featured on The Endline’s “MLS Tifo of the Week.”

Here’s assistant coach and former USL head coach, Brian Schmetzer, on what the display meant to him (Joshua Mayers, “Emerald City Supporters’ amazing display draws national acclaim“):

“That was unbelievably cool,” said Schmetzer, an assistant coach for Sounders FC. “It was unbelievably touching. It was unbelievably emotional. It was just unbelievable that the fans went to that much work and that much creativity to show us exactly how they feel. Unbelievable. And it was a fantastic moment. I’ll never forget it.”

Schmetzer later added: “I’d like to buy every single one of the Emerald City Supporters a beer. Everyone that worked on that, I’ll make it up to them at some point in my life.”

First, the Timbers Army needs to be given some credit for their away tifo display — kudos. However, the North End Supporters also represented very well with the biggest tifo I’ve seen from the North End of the stadium; and their message was an unintentionally fitting response to the TA’s away tifo. Check it out:

North End Supporters answer the obvious.

Tifo in Qwest Field and North America has been taken to levels never before seen, but I know no Sounders supporters group is going to bask in the glory and rest on their laurels — can’t wait to see the next plateau Sounders tifo will reach.

If you’re like me and you just can’t get enough (I’ve been watching these videos for three days now), here’s another angle of Decades of Dominance:

Jeff Korytoski, an American coach plying his trade in Guatemala, is quickly building a serious name for himself and his club, Antigua G.F.C (wiki, official).

In a spectacular reversal of the usual trend where soccer intelligence flows north from Latin America, Antigua hired the ex-collegiate coach to pull the club out of Guatemala’s third division after they’d tumbled about as low as you can go in Guatemalan futbol — a formidable task before considering the language barrier and potentially hostile cultural perceptions.

Brilliantly, it appears, Korytoski has led Antigua into the second division next season. His attacking brand of soccer and positive results have driven dramatic attendance increases and Korytoski himself is growing more involved with the club’s marketing, operations and long-term strategy as he looks to establish Antigua as a regional force.

Seeing what Korytoski and his team have already accomplished, Antigua may very well be the next little-club-that-could.

If all goes well, Korytoski will be leading Antigua G.F.C. into a Champion’s League clash at Qwest Field within a decade.

Read Brent Latham‘s New York Times piece “American Coach Finds Success in Guatemala.”

1. Deschutes Obsidian Stout
2. Emerald City Dottie’s Lager
3. Big Al’s Brougham Bitter
4. Leavenworth Dunkel

Walk Among Us from GOLAZO on Vimeo.

A tribute to the fan.